The vending business in Moscow began to wind down

The capital's vending machine owners have begun dismantling them, and by the end of April, about 1,000 facilities will stop operating, the head of the Board of the Union of Vending Machine Operators (SOTA) told Izvestia Ivan Popov. Most of them have already notified the Federal Tax Service that they should be de-registered. These facilities are mostly located in places of urgent demand: in the subway, in social facilities such as schools and clinics, and are also included in the tourist infrastructure. They sell snacks, tea and coffee, as well as soft drinks.

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According to him, a total of at least 10,000 devices may stop working in the capital within six months. There are about 20 thousand of them in Moscow.

The thing is that the metropolitan authorities indexed the trade fee rate for this business to the amount of inflation, which led to its sharp tax increase by almost two times, Ivan Popov added. He recalled that the trade fee appeared in Moscow in 2015, it is paid by retail operators regardless of business turnover, it is charged per unit of an object once a quarter. In 2021, the authorities extended this tax to vending machines. And starting in 2025, for the first time, they decided to index this fee for the amount of inflation by applying a deflator to it.

"In practice, for the entire retail industry, inflation increased by almost 98% from 2015 to 2025, but for our facilities from 2021 to 2025 — by 48%. And we were sure that the trade fee would be increased by the latter amount, but in reality, a coefficient was applied to us, starting in 2015, as a result, we have to pay a virtually doubled tax of almost 10 thousand rubles. This is destroying the entire economy of our microbusiness," said SOTA, Chairman of the Board.

Earlier in February, SOTA had already contacted the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the metropolitan government with a description of this problem, and the entrepreneurs asked them to reduce such a serious fee. The answer so far has come from the Moscow Department of Economic Policy and Development. Officials noted that they are considering this issue. Izvestia has sent a request to all recipients.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Snack melts: vending business started to wind down in Moscow